UNBECOMING: A Novel by Rebecca Scherm

Grace, or Julie, as she calls herself now, lives in a rented room outside Paris. She spends her days mending teapots, re-setting gems and repairing antiques. She keeps to herself, except when she goes to the local internet café to check on what’s happening back home in Tennessee. It’s there she looks up the local paper, to see the latest news about the three boys who went to jail just after she hopped a plane to Europe. UNBECOMING: A Novel (Viking) by Rebecca Scherm is the story of how she develops over the course of the novel into a lying, self-indulgent thief.

“You’ve told lies, I bet, you don’t even realize you’ve told. Like an addict! They just fall out of your mouth, like you’re breathing them.”

It starts with the theft of a painting and a cat and mouse waiting game. UNBECOMING is a psychological thriller and it’s not an easy read; it takes work to follow the story which I appreciated as a reader. The characters were flushed out fully and as scary as Grace was at times, she could be anyone I know. The plot was equally compelling and enjoyable.

The one comment I have is that there were times when plots seemed to be competing against each other. I don’t want to give away spoilers, but there were relationships and other side stories that kept creeping up, wanting more words and pages, that in my opinion, as the reader, weren’t necessary and could have been edited out. But those are choices the author makes.